It's all gone a bit quiet on the update front recently for the AI series.... I wondered if there are any plans to update the dante firmware soon.

Audinate have released some welcome feature improvements, such as password security. There's also some great stuff happening with the new Dante domains thingy. None of this is useable without Presonus providing Dante firmware updates.

There are people around who still thinks that the avb/soundgrid bridge is around the corner. I saw a post only a couple of days ago thinking this will be available soon. He will have to wait a very long time...

I'm baffled by Presonus using AVB. It's died a death in the market, almost entirely because it needs magic switches. I work on a university campus and AVB does not exist here because our switches don't support it. We're rolling out Dante for the audio and proprietary video solutions like Wyrestorm because AVB can't do audio on our network and it can't do video at all. It's a bust.

But I would like Presonus to at least update the expensive Dante cards I bought. I mean Audinate do all the work for this. I fear Presonus might have a dev team of one guy, who only works fitfully on a Wednesday afternoon.

They are both ethernet based protocols . No, this was more in response to lacking progress for some announced features including the aforementioned avb/soundgrid bridge.

After that presonus namm video was made Waves apparenly dropped out as a member of the avnu alliance. Waves have also published a paper as to why avb isn’t their cup of tea when it comes to soundgrid. There are also no other resources about this bridge to be found. I’ve also directly asked Waves who confirmed that this avb bridge project is on hold for now.

Waves plugins are of course supported by using multirack native. It is the low latency technology betwen mixer and soundgrid server that isn't supported.

I had this fresh in mind since couple of days ago when I saw in the comment field of this video below that some user said that this avb-bridge is “coming (soon)”.

Since I already have a soundgrid server this bridge would have been really nice to have in my inventory...

wahlerstudios wrote@Robert Lofgren: The Waves Soundgrid Bridge for AVB was shown by Ray Tantzen during the NAMM Winter Show 2017 as an external device for the Series III family. Here is the link to the video. The part starts at about -3:10. https://www.facebook.com/PreSonus/videos/10154294085132634/.

I could not find a suitable place to post this question, so I thought here might be good.

I am using a 32RMai and 16RMai, shortly I will have a CS18ai. I also own a SW5E switch.

While I have hopes for the recent beta firmware for the RMs, and I have been testing it -- I still think I can see the writing on the wall. The AVB in the RMs will never go anywhere and never talk to the series IIIs (at least PreSonus is not going to do anything)

I have been weighing the possibility of adding 2 Dante cards and these new Dante AVIO adapters (https://www.audinate.com/products/devices/dante-avio) for the CS18 to make a system that will last for awhile and be compatible with other Dante devices.... at least this would make the ecosystem exapandable for a some years to some.

Can anyone here in the forums point me to or respond with a list of features of the PreSonus mixsystem (2 RMs and a CS18) using Dante vs. Presonus AVB I ?

You asked me about this in a PM, but I'm going to respond here so others get the benefit of my ramblings..

As you already have two RM units and are planning to get a CS I recommend going with the included AVB. This will allow you to properly link the RMs and CS with full design functionality. I would also recommend getting the Motu AVB switch rather than the new Presonus version, purely on the basis that I have seen connection issues reported with the Presonus that were fixed by switching (LOL) to the Motu...

While its possible to "fake" cascading using Dante, its not recommended as it can't be implemented fully. Cascading (linking two RMs to make a single, 64 channel box) requires linking the mix busses (Main, Aux and FX) from the slave RM to the Master RM. While all of those are available as outputs on Dante, there is no way to input them to the second unit without using input channels.Even if you do that, the CS wouldn't control two separate RMs that are not connected together (with AVB) in cascade mode...

If you only had the one RM and CS then I'd say using Dante would gain you far more (network recording, digital inserts, digital splits, additional devices, etc) than you lose (limited audio in the CS, which could be replaced with the AVIO units). But trying to cascade 2 RMs and control with a CS while using Dante is basically a non starter.

It's important to point out here that the limitation is not Dante, but the firmware in the RM. All other mixers I've come across don't care what expansion/option card is in the expansion slot, whereas the Presonus are written to look for specific cards. So where UC Surface simply says "Network" on the input selector, internally there is different code depending on whether you're using the AVB card or the Dante card... and the cascade function is not available if you have the Dante card.

Unfortunately I did all this research a bit later than I should have and maybe I would have simply sold my RM32ai and shifted to something else. I like Presonus products and have been a supporter since before the 16.4.2 and want to stay with the products. I bought my RM32ai in 2016 with the idea to upgrade in the next 2 years but I have learned in the past brand loyalty doesn't always lead to customer loyalty. Since the RMs now seem to be an absolutely closed eco-system, then I think Dante might be the only way to find new ways to use them.

Actually its not necessary for me to cascade the RMs, only on a very few occasions so maybe Dante is the answer. But I guess I will wait a bit longer for the newest firmware for the AVB I

Can you explain if the Dante cards are like other Dante cards... when Audinate updates come they can be easily implemented... or you must have to wait for presonus to implement them?

Thanks again for your reply.

Karyn wroteHi

You asked me about this in a PM, but I'm going to respond here so others get the benefit of my ramblings..

As you already have two RM units and are planning to get a CS I recommend going with the included AVB. This will allow you to properly link the RMs and CS with full design functionality. I would also recommend getting the Motu AVB switch rather than the new Presonus version, purely on the basis that I have seen connection issues reported with the Presonus that were fixed by switching (LOL) to the Motu...

While its possible to "fake" cascading using Dante, its not recommended as it can't be implemented fully. Cascading (linking two RMs to make a single, 64 channel box) requires linking the mix busses (Main, Aux and FX) from the slave RM to the Master RM. While all of those are available as outputs on Dante, there is no way to input them to the second unit without using input channels.Even if you do that, the CS wouldn't control two separate RMs that are not connected together (with AVB) in cascade mode...

If you only had the one RM and CS then I'd say using Dante would gain you far more (network recording, digital inserts, digital splits, additional devices, etc) than you lose (limited audio in the CS, which could be replaced with the AVIO units). But trying to cascade 2 RMs and control with a CS while using Dante is basically a non starter.

It's important to point out here that the limitation is not Dante, but the firmware in the RM. All other mixers I've come across don't care what expansion/option card is in the expansion slot, whereas the Presonus are written to look for specific cards. So where UC Surface simply says "Network" on the input selector, internally there is different code depending on whether you're using the AVB card or the Dante card... and the cascade function is not available if you have the Dante card.

The last update that would have made any difference was for AES67 which I believe the Presonus Dante cards have. The Brooklyn II chip has its own firmware and updater software from Audinate, separate from the Presonus firmware which controls the rest of the card. I would assume that if a major update became available from Audinate then it should be able to be loaded.

Are you sure that the presons dante has aes67? Last time I checked (which addmittingly was quite a while ago) it didn’t.

The last major dante update from audinate was v4 and its support for DDM and PIN lockdown. While audinate releases firmware updates quite regulary for their oem cards the oem still needs to do some final tweaking before a firmware can be installed. It is not possible to take the e.g. x-dante firmware and install it on the presonus dante card. There is no generic firmware available from audinate for an end-user.

The avio-adapters are quite cool. I’ve tested a couple of them before they were released and they even do aes67. Another cool thing is that they can be a clock master for your dante network and is therefore the only thing needed to get dante virtual soundcard work between computers.

Karyn wroteThe last update that would have made any difference was for AES67 which I believe the Presonus Dante cards have. The Brooklyn II chip has its own firmware and updater software from Audinate, separate from the Presonus firmware which controls the rest of the card. I would assume that if a major update became available from Audinate then it should be able to be loaded.